By With Netflix’s upcoming fantasy series The Witcher starring Henry Cavill releasing in less than a month, critics have begun to receive review copies of the first five episodes. Though their reviews are held under a strict embargo lifting on the day of the show’s release on Friday, December 20, they were able to share some of their thoughts. We’ve collected the most notable reactions below. We’ll begin with showrunner Lauren S. Hissrich (also known as Mom in the fandom).
We’re also dying here, Lauren! Though we still have a long wait ahead of us until the season’s release, these screeners bear good news: the critical reception has been incredibly positive so far.
Some were thirsty for Henry
Many praised the fight scenes
Others were carefully following guidelines
Other than Henry, Anya Chalotra was praised for her depiction of Yennefer
Some think the show might not be for everyone
The story will differ from the books, but stay true to their spirit
If you’ve read the books and are interested in spoiling yourself some of the details, you can check this Reddit AMA held by one of the critics. Otherwise, that’ll be all for today.
The reactions are very positive and that should come as a great relief to anyone harboring doubts (though this is not uncommon for early screeners). The rest of us, mere mortals, will have to wait until December 20 to experience The Witcher season one.
Trying to move past “sit on a towel”. Girl locker room humor, who knew?
A lot of interesting perspective here. I am audiobooking the whole catalog at this point after reading a number of years ago. Mistake? I will have various sequences of events very clear in my mind.
OTOH, I think the trailer has already set expectations for things to be a little different. After watching it ~15,000 times I found that, while listening to books, I was starting to replace Witcher 3 character images with trailer character images. Chalotra as Yennefer I think has been the biggest shift, but it works!